In addition to some math, as Karan mentions, you may first want to test some applications in AR and VR and take a critical look at them.

So you understand some of the pros and cons of VR, what makes it a good experience, and some of the challenges of the medium.

If you want to read a book (a long one), I recommend this one:

The VR Book: Human-Centered Design for Virtual Reality: Jason Jerald: 9781970001129: Amazon.com: Books

Otherwise, in terms of tools, here are a few to get you started:

Game engines (although you can use them for any application):

• Unity 3D (you can only start with Unity)
• unreal engine

3D modeling and animation:

• Blender (you can only start with Blender)
• 3DSMax
• Maya

2D design and animation:

• Gimp (this is fine to start with)
• Photoshop

Audio:

You can start with just Unity and learn C# to get started. Then start learning Blender (my recommendation). You’ll do a bit of Gimp or Photoshop and use Audacity for your sound effects along the way.

I wrote some posts that may help you if you want a very comprehensive answer:

8 Steps to Building Virtual Reality Apps, Even if You’re Not a Technician by Antoine Ribordy in Antoine Ribordy’s Posts

VR 101: Learn the Art and Design Your First App by Antoine Ribordy in Antoine Ribordy’s Posts

8 Steps to Building Virtual Reality Apps, Even if You’re Not a Technician by Antoine Ribordy in Antoine Ribordy’s Posts

The Complete List of Tools You Need to Create Your First VR Experience by Antoine Ribordy at Antoine Ribordy’s Posts

I’m also pasting here an answer I wrote to a similar question elsewhere (just about VR), I hope it can help you further.

If you look at a virtual reality experience, you can break it down into the 5 senses you use to interact with the world at large. Now you can specialize in any of these senses. But today, 3 of them are more directly in the spotlight and accessible. For those, you can add movement as needed to move in the world:

1. Vision (glasses, vision in general, includes motion sickness in a certain sense)
2. Listen (3D sound)
3. Touch (haptics)
4. Movement

If you want to focus on any of these, you’ll need to focus on neuroscience, electronics, and how to design consumer products. But it sounds like you are more focused on the software side as an interaction design graduate.

So on the software side (or more generally the content side), you have those blocks:

1. Scripts that define the behavior of each element of the world.
2. 3D models to compose the elements of the world (for example, a room, a table, people, a graphical interface)
3. Audio: sounds, speech and music.
4. Animation
5. storytelling

So, in terms of skills, we are talking about:

1. Programming in C#, C++, or/and Java primarily
2. 3d modeling
3. Sound engineering, sound effects, musical composition.
4. Motion capture or keyframe animation
5. Write story, storyboard

Now, you could dip your toes in all of them and see how it works or you could go deeper into a field. If you want to master the whole process and be more of a game designer, then you’ll want to dig deeper into each part.

If you want to learn VR and AR, there are 5 general prerequisites for both.

1. Mathematics: Firm foundations in linear algebra, matrices, trigonometry, and vector mathematics.
2. Programming/Scripting: Knowing a language like C#, C++ to turn your algorithms into something functional. You should be
3. Content Creation/Integration – Most if not all AR or VR experiences will need 3D content. Knowledge of creating or integrating 3D models, textures, etc. it is essential to develop a VR or AR experience.
4. The basics of VR/AR such as stereo imaging, reprojection, and IMU operation are always useful to know, but today’s game engines have made it extremely easy to implement VR applications, so this point is not a difficult prerequisite for development. However, I think it’s essential to understand the technology you plan to develop experiences for.
5. UX: Knowledge about the user experience in a VR/AR experience. A good way to start is to start reading best practice guides like in the following link

Developer Center – Documentation and SDK

You must be proficient in at least one of the first three prerequisites prior to diving

If you want to delve into the world of VR and understand more about how the technology works rather than just developing VR applications, then important fields of study are optics, signal processing and filtering, cognitive psychology, machine learning, computer vision, ergonomics and product design.

Great question. I guess this is a problem of pragmatism and that it starts with the end in mind. If you are new to the world of AR and VR, having a background in programming and math is highly beneficial. It’s also helpful (as someone else has suggested in this post) to download as many existing VR and AR apps as possible, use them, and form your own opinion about what works well and what doesn’t.

If your goal is to eventually work in the industry, it might be worth approaching some larger companies and considering the possibilities of an internship. Generally speaking, when it comes to software development, and particularly the latest technologies like AR and VR, it’s also worth considering that demand will always outstrip supply. As such, these abilities are highly valuable, so you’re already in the right place.

If you are interested in learning more, you may find this post helpful in terms of where the VR/Augmented Reality industry is headed:

The future of Augmented Reality application development | augnite